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Indians Protest Across Golden Gate Bridge

Holding their hands, displaying placards denouncing the human rights abuses by Pakistan and occasionally shouting slogans, about 2,000 Indian Americans in the Bay area formed a mile-long human chain across the Golden Gate bridge on Saturday morning. Many wore purple ribbons and carried placards saying 'Pakistan, Shame Shame' around their necks.

It is the biggest such protest by Indians on the West Coast; some of the organizers think that it is in fact the biggest protest ever by Indians in America. And the Friends of India Society International and other organizers involved in the protest are planning similar protests elsewhere in America.

The California Highway Patrol put their numbers close to 700 but the organizers say the patrol counted people who entered from the northern side, while the largest number of the protestors, unexpectedly came from the southern side. The event was covered by several mainstream television stations and The San Francisco Examiner newspaper.

The protest, triggered by an informal discussion held by 20 something software engineers and computer analysts at Oracle, was organized largely through the Internet. It was in protest against the torture and murder of six Indian soldiers in Kashmir. Though the Pakistani army has denied responsibility for the torture and deaths, the participants scoffed at the denials.

"These were such gruesome murders that they defy humanity," Gaurang Desai of Friends of India Society International told reporters. "Indians here can no longer go on with their lives as if it is business as usual."

"War is dirty and terrible things happen in any war but this kind of brutality is gut-churning," said Mani M Manivannan, one of the organizers. He said some of his friends at Oracle got inspiration for the rally from a recent protest at the Golden Gate Bridge by Yugoslavians in the Bay Area.

The participants shouted: 'Kashmir Belongs To Us', 'Shame, Shame, Pakistan! Start to learn to be human', 'Butchers of Pakistan! Don't you have any shame?', 'Stop the barbarism', and 'Jai Hind'.

"We organized the event in less than 10 days, and we never expected such an overwhelming response," said Sunil Dhar, a start-up entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, and an activist with Kashmiri Overseas Association (Northern California). "It was a cold, foggy morning, and on the bridge, it gets really cold. Yet many parents brought the children."

Every major Indian American organization in the Bay Area supported the rally, though several Indian students at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley decided to stay out. Some said they were appalled by what Pakistan had done but they were not happy taking part in a protest organized by such groups by the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh and the FISI.

A few wondered whether the protestors have the moral courage to protest the alleged atrocities by the Indian army. Several Sri Lankan Tamil students also posed similar arguments.

"I am surprised at such thinking," said Dhar. "I am sure that every person who joined the human chain thought of their Indian heritage and of India, and it never crossed their minds this was a sectarian activity or something connected with one organization or a group of individuals."

Most protestors came from such Silicon Valley cities, such as San Jose, Fremont, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Milpitas and Mountain View. Others came from cities such as Davis and Modesto that are over a hundred miles away.

The gathering began about 10 am and the peaceful protest ended by noon. There were no counter-protests or efforts to create disturbance.

Many drivers responded to the protest with resounding support by honking their car horns and waving with a thumbs up sign. "The drivers were people of all races, and demonstrated their concern for human rights," said Dhar.

Among the protestors was Anand Ramaswamy, a 24-year-old software engineer with Hewlett-Packard in Sunnyvale, who has been in America for a year. This was his first participation in a demonstration.

"The world should take note of what is happening in Kashmir," he said. "Kosovo is not the only place where human tragedies happen." Many of the participants were there for a similar reason.

Some had stronger reasons: "I became involved because of my strong Kashmiri heritage and my need to make the world media aware of the devastating effect that Pakistani sponsored terrorism has had on my community," said Dhar.

For Ashwini Supur the success of the protest had special significance. For she was one of the first people to think of a human chain protest.

In an earlier interview she had recalled how the idea came up when she met with her friends to check about an effort to raise donations for the Indian soldiers.

"We had collected about $ 5,000 to send to India but we wanted to do something visible so that not only is our community galvanized, mainstream America also pays attention to the violation of human rights," Supur had said.

While the discussion veered towards the feasibility of the demonstration, one of the women in the group urged that a date be set.

"If you go around asking people whether they want to have a demonstration, there will be a lot of argument," said the woman who asked for anonymity. "But if we were to say that we are going to have a human chain, others were bound to follow us."

"But we said, if we hold the demonstration next week, it will be too late to make an impact and many people may not feel passionate about it at all," said the woman. "We should have, indeed, held it last week."

She said she had a gut feeling that the community would respond fast.

And that is precisely what happened, says Mani M Manivannan of the Tamil Manram. "While people of my generation could be skeptical of such efforts, younger people at Oracle and other Silicon Valley firms were ready to take the plunge.

"And we could not say 'no' to them," said Manivannan, who is in his forties.

Among the community associations joining the protest are the Bay Area Telugu Association, the Sindhi Association, the Bay Area Prabasi, the Brihan Maharashtra Mandal and the Federation of Indo-American Association.

EARLIER REPORT:
Indians To form Human Chain At Golden Gate

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